---
title: Moving to a Standing Desk
date: 2011-05-08
layout: post
comments: true
categories:
- Blog
tags: []
---

Over the last several months, both at work and at home I got fed up with sitting in front of my computer.  There has been several articles recently about the benefits of standing verse sitting.  <ul>   <li><a href="http://lifehacker.com/5798791/calculate-how-many-calories-you-can-burn-if-you-switch-to-a-standing-desk" target="_blank">How Many Calories Would You Burn If You Switched to a Standing Desk?</a> </li>    <li><a href="http://www.npr.org/2011/04/25/135575490/sitting-all-day-worse-for-you-than-you-might-think" target="_blank">Sitting All Day: Worse For You Than You Might Think</a> </li>    <li><a href="http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/23/is-all-that-sitting-really-killing-us/?ref=personaltech" target="_blank">Is All That Sitting Really Killing Us?</a> </li> </ul> 
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<h2>At Work</h2>  Sitting in front of a computer all day is an unavoidable aspect when you work in the software industry. Like many office jobs, a large percentage of our day is spent in a degrading slouch.  Even if you have great posture you are still just sitting on your butt. At Microsoft standing desks are not that unusual, if you have a medical condition, such as a bad back, you can get a fancy motorized workstation.  These are very cool, but they require a doctor's approval, a set of paperwork, and way too much frustration for my interest.

###$10 is all it takes###
After a brief Alpha test (involved books and fearful looks from my co-works) I determined the desk height that was going to work for me.  From there I took off for my local home improvement store to buy 16, 6" x 6" x 2 1/2" pavers, four for each corner of my desk.  This was much more stable then my Alpha build, although I was still getting some strange looks from co-workers.

![image](/blog_images/Photo_C102AB75-93DD-CDD7-B8C4-91BD09A4106E.jpg)
![image](/blog_images/Photo_BE41C163-538B-9236-3554-2CD3D75235F5.jpg)

This may not be the fanciest office desk, but it solves the problem, and I already have a few co-workers building their own versions, a trendsetter, I know.

###At Home###
After a few months of using my standing desk at work, I really wanted to find a way to convert my home office desk to the same setup.  In this case, it was not going to be as easy as a set of bricks.  My home office desk is a large corner unit that I share with my wife.  Plus, I didn't think the landscaping look was going to go over all that well within the house.

Before

![image](/blog_images/MG_7156.jpg)

No this was going to take some creativity.  After spending a bunch of time searching around the web, I found <a href="http://sim.plified.com/" target="_blank">Chris Pollock's</a> <a href="http://sim.plified.com/2008/08/17/how-to-build-a-custom-ergonomic-computer-desk/" target="_blank">How To: Build a Custom Ergonomic Computer Desk</a>.  Chris' desk design was not exactly what I was looking for, but it gave me inspiration.  Taking Chris' design, I was able to hack it for my purposes.  I wanted to reuse my existing desk, but I just wanted the corner section to be about 42" high.  After finding all the parts I needed at <a href="http://www.simplifiedbuilding.com/" target="_blank">Simplified Building</a> I was about set, I just needed 4x7' 1 1/2 inch galvanized fence posts from the local Lowes.

Hardhat Zone

![image](/blog_images/MG_7166.jpg)

Finished Product

![image](/blog_images/MG_7168.jpg)

Parts List:
  <p>5 X L152-7 Square Flange = $60</p>  <p>8 X L10-7 Single Socket Tee = $75</p>  <p>5 X 133-7 Plastic Plug = $12</p>  <p>4 X 7' Galvanized Fence Post = $48</p>  <p>Total =&#160; $195</p>  <p>Not too bad, I was able to reuse my current desk, and did not affect the layout of my home office.  Of course now that I have my desk this way my wife is thinking of having me do the same thing to her desk areas both at home and work.</p>  

###Get off your A$$###
As you can see, with a little creativity you too can build out a standing desk.  Try it, I'm sure you will like it, I haven't even thought of going back.
